Kane and Lynch 2 Dog Days is second attempt from Io Interactive to deliver a third person experience that will blow gamers minds away. Should you buy this game? or is it going to make you as insane as Lynch?
The story starts with Lynch who has a deal of a life time for Kane. Kane flies to Sheng Hai to help on the deal. Later on Kane and Lynch accidently shoot the daughter of one of the most powerful man in China, and now the entire city is against them. The entire plot consists of you trying to escape Shenghai…and that’s pretty much it. The story never really grabs your attention or makes you care about what is going on. If you never played the first Kane and Lynch you will feel lost sometimes with the dialogue but for the most part you will be able to understand what’s going on. The story definitely lacks “in-depth” element that will make you care about the characters or the overall plot.
The entire game plays like someone is following you around with a camera. It is quite an unique look, which is very interesting. This style definitely adds a feeling of real violence and desperation to the game. Only problem is when you sprint, the camera shakes so much, that you almost feel like not sprinting at all just to avoid that annoyance. The physics in this game are very awkward, bodies fall in unusual positions, and the object interaction is awkward. Usually such problems are not that bad, but it is so easily noticeable that it will take from overall experience.
The major flaw in this game is that the ENTIRE game has absolutely no background music. Which completely kills any chances of setting an ambience for the game. The voice acting is horrible as well, listening to Lynch’s tourette syndrome almost makes you want to lower the volume all the way. Dialogue is undeveloped and overall it doesn’t help the story. However the sound effects are pretty nice and it’s the only thing that saves this game’s sound department from being absolutely horrible.
The single player campaign will have you going from point A to point B, fight some bad guys and repeat that concept over and over. The stages are a bit cramped and moving can be quite a pain, the cover system is very hard to control, and doesn’t seem to protect you a lot. You have no freedom to explore the maps, no special items to collect, just overall nothing to look forward to when finish a level. From beginning to end you know how the game play out.
Sometimes the AI enemies will hide for cover for a long time, bullets do not go through objects and attempting to fight in close combat will usually result in your death. Sneaking up on enemies allows you take the enemy hostage, you can either use it as a human shield, throw him, or execute him. The hostage system is kind of jerky specially with online multiplayer, but it is kind of cool to bust a cap in somebody’s head. But that joy only lasts a couple a seconds, and throughout most of the game you won’t have many opportunities to do this.
While the controls are pretty solid, the hit boxes seems to be way off sometimes. Quite often it seemed that my shots were way off and the enemy still died. If you get shot too many times you will fall ala last stand from Modern Warfare 2, you are allowed to get back up as soon as you fall, which raises the question what was the point of falling in the first place. Enemies have a crazy good accuracy and you will find yourself ducking for cover and still getting shot. The campaign should last you 6-7 hours at most, and I highly doubt that you will want some more after playing this atrocity.
The multiplayer is mildly entertaining. The fragile alliance multiplayer have you and a group of thief’s working together to get loot. Once the loot in collected you can turn against your buddies and get the entire loot all for yourself. Shooting friends will mark you as a traitor so others can try and kill you. It’s pretty entertaining multiplayer, but nothing you can very deep into.
Kane and Lynch 2 Dog Days lacks strong points in all departments. While the game as an unique look, it alone cannot save the game from it’s horrible repetitive style, lack of background music, bad voice acting, bad story and overall just bad execution in all departments. While the multiplayer is ok, it alone cannot possibly compensate for the $60 price tag. I would highly suggest you pass on this game, even renting it would be a waste of your time.
